Paul Shapera
The Shanty Town
Han Mi:

Once upon a time, there was a shanty town in the center of a large park in the city of New Albion. Although it had started with a small group of back to nature enthusiasts, it was eventually joined by runaways and disenfranchised young punks, until eventually it evolved into a various mix of neo futurist hippies, crunchy cyberpunks and transfuturist modification junkies. Whatever digital body enhancements that existed under a certain legal radar could be acquired here, and thus amongst the colorful, close knit collection of societal strays were those with the most radical body modifications. Over time this odd collection had evolved into not just their own neighborhood, but culture and community

Shanty Town Residents:

We’ve got bio cyber futurist transmutation robo-tech
We’ve got gadget doodad knickknacks some folks stick into their heads
Altercations artificial and organic you can buy
And cybertechs both punk and hippy who’ll jerry rig it for a price

We’ve got biotech enhancements, we’ve got chips inside the brain
We’ve got tattoo art and body parts with feline dna
We’ve girls with cyber eyeballs seeing spectrums you can’t dream
If it’s the edge of biohacking then it’s here that you might seek

We’ve got shacks whose walls are motherboards, inside a VR world
Out resident biopunk grows tails onto paying college girls
We’ve got hippies growing veggies and punks with half a robot face
There’s a lot of folks with lots of limbs that all have been replaced

We’ve got body parts that plug in, liquid flesh both old and new
Cyber eyes that let you see the world as an anime cartoon
We’ve got our own biopunk genius, a dropout so they say
Who makes all our toys here possible and they're just getting underway

We’ve got lights that light the park at night but the only way
You can see them is with an implant and those we rarely give away
Except to all the prostitutes who roam the park here every night
And for free we gave them tasers in their knuckles for a fight

If you want a pair of ears that look just a like an ocelot
That can hear leylines and astral winds and ghosts that roam the park
Or the sound of creatures cats stare at when looking at the wall
We can help you here, find all the things you wish you didn’t know


We’ve 2 sentient holograms on the run here from the law
For a string of robberies years ago they pulled when they were young
We’ve got Robodog and Luna with just a little fairy blood
She can turn your dreams to nightmares if you really piss her off

We’ve got cyber goths and Emo techs and rivetheads who will role play
Afro future anarchopunks who take furries out to raves
New romantic beatnik otherkin with neofolkish tastes
And the queerness here intensifies each and every day